The main theme of Richard III is the conflict between evil and good, with Richard embodying all that is foul, including the ability to mask evil with a fair face. Although times are still unsettled, it is Richard's psychopathology, his mad, self-destructive drive for power that moves the play forward. Neither Shakespeare nor Richard himself make any bones about the epicenter of the bloody, horrible events that take place. Richard's opening soliloquy in Act I, scene i, spells out the evil at hand in superbly disturbing words.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
(I.i.1-4, 9-31)

Richard is a freak of nature, a self-proclaimed enemy to human kindness, bent upon destruction and the disruption of the commonwealth. As a result, Richard III is part morality play and part melodrama: Evil versus good. While Richard's Evil is writ large, the good side is sorely undermanned until the final Act. Richard is able to succeed because those who would otherwise oppose him are easily duped (e.g., Clarence), at odds with each other (notably the female characters of the play), or harbor their own political ambitions (as in Buckingham's case). Active good without tainted motive surfaces only with Richmond's appearance in Act V, although some of the nobles (Hastings and Stanley) prove to be of good character.